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I’ve always wanted to go to check out the Kootenay Coldsmoke Festival but have never had the chance, this last weekend I finally had a chance to fix that and spent the weekend deep in the heart of the West Kootenays. The Coldsmoke itself is a smattering of events over the course of three days clinics, gear demos and evening parties.

The main reason for our attendance was the ROAM Randonee rally which ran for the 4th year and is famous for awesome prizing from sponsers who really step up. G3, Arcyteryx, Black Diamond, Mountain Gear and Dynafit all hand out some amazing prizes.

The course was mostly outside their ski area boundary, and started with a long skating section that zapped the legs before we committed to a winding skintrack that brought us up to the top of White Queen pk and a wind hammered ridge(lots of downhill skins on skiing). Before a heinous breakable windslab descent to the base area and on to the second leg of the race up to west Ymir bowl via the Motherlode and an even more heinous breakable windslab descent to the finish line.

The field spread out fast with Peter Knight nipping at my heels for the first climb, “Random-Fit-Guy” Scott Jeffery in third and Billie Velisek in fourth. The rolling terrain was relentless with lots of flat and down sections that kept your mind focused on keeping on the gas and milking all the glide out of every down section. The course was mostly all below treeline so I imagined Peter jumping out from every corner.

In the end the Billie and I walked away with a new pair of skis each, quite stoked and ready for the rest of the events and revelry.

7 Responses

just cause Scott Jeffefry isn’t on the national team doesn’t make him a “random fit guy” He works full time and has 2 kids and no time to train for skimo…maybe I read it wrong, but it was a bit of a pretentious comment…

thanks for your comment, when I wrote the blog write up I didn’t have access to the full results so I just honestly didn’t know the name of the fast guy that i didn’t recognise. To me “random fit guy” is a bit of a term of endearment, this sport is in a phase of growth where there are guys out there that don’t train, don’t have specialised gear but have the engine to do really well….. a phenomenon that I think of as the “random fit guy” factor. When you line up at a rando race, there’s always a chance that there’s an unassuming (not in spandex) person that’s going to be really fast.

Good report E. The ROAM Rally will always be special to me, it was firsy skimo race ever. Before spandex and carbon! And, you’re right, great swag.
Ya, I can’t imagine having two kids and other obligations and trying to race run for the National team. That would tough. 😉